Hors Satan

A man (David Dewaele) walks across the rolling fields near a small
French village. He meets a troubled young woman (Alexandra Lematre) who tells
him, “I can’t take anymore.” The man replies, “There is only one way.” Soon,
a shotgun blast kills another man – was he the girl’s abuser? This is one
of the many questions raised in the landscape rich “Hors Satan.”

Robin:
Writer-director Bruno Dumont indulges himself with his lyrical, thoughtful
story of a man who may be evil or a guardian angel (or both) as he takes
the girl under his protective wing. What happens, though, are long walks
by the man and the girl as they travel miles, it seems, only to gaze at the
mountains, fields, valleys and the sea, usually at sunrise or sunset.

The ambiguity of the episodic story with its sparse dialog, combined with
the visually stunning landscape photography, makes “Hors Satan” a compelling,
if overly long, composition. The long shots of scenery – very long – are
beautiful but are lingered on to excess. The 110 minute film could have 30
minutes cut and not be so self-indulgent. Still, it is a beautiful looking
film with an intriguing character in the man. I give it a B-.

Laura:
In southwestern France on the Côte d’Opale a homeless man (David
Dewaele, "Hadewijch") is regarded as a savior and possible lover by a teenaged
farm girl (Alexandra Lemâtre), as a healer by the mother (Sonia Barthélémy)
of another, younger girl (Juliette Bacquet) and as a trespasser by a local
guard (Christophe Bon) who has designs on the farm girl. The fate
of a female hiker (Aurore Broutin) who encounters the man on her way to
Boulogne has eerie connections to the town's two young girls in writer/coeditor/director
Bruno Dumont's ("Humanité," "Flanders") "Hors Satan."

A small village bordered by the sea and the road to Boulogne features a
mountain, wild flower fields with a divided cistern, woods and dunes, where
the taciturn man makes camp beside the fragment of a long ago foundation.
This varied, compact landscape is contemplated by the man and the teenager
in meditation and perhaps prayer. They spend hours silently walking,
but their time together is punctuated with violence. When we first see
the two together, the girl, in what will become apparent is a ritual, asks
for a cigarette, but she is visibly upset and says only that she 'cannot take
it anymore.' After a while, the two have made their way outside a barn
and the man lifts a shotgun, killing the man coming out. We can surmise that
the girl was being abused, and indeed, this supposition is confirmed later
when her mother (Valérie Mestdagh) apologizes for the harm caused by
her stepfather.

In a scene which will be repeated twice more, police tape goes up around
the crime scene, but no one appears to be questioned or arrested.
The man is called into a neat little home in the village by a distraught
woman. He enters a darkened bedroom where a young girl lies and is
thanked on his way out (during a second visit, we will witness what he does,
a type of breathing in through the mouth or moaning out, a primal type of
exorcism). The farm girl tries to get him to kiss her, but he resists with
a smile. She also brings him food and lets him into her home when
her mother is not there. Young village boys taunt them with calls
of lovebirds. When the guard who has asked the man to get off the
land tries to kiss the same girl, seemingly unobserved, he's badly beaten
in the forest and taken away by ambulance. Another man looks stonily
towards the homeless man and his friend. This stout guy has an Alsatian,
Hugo, the only character named in the film.

"Hors Satan" ("Outside Satan") is full of events which could be construed
as religious. When the woods are seen ablaze across the horizon, the
man tells the girl that if she crosses the narrow divide in the middle of
a cistern, it will cease. And so she walks on water. The hiker
who asks him for directions, then invites him to have sex receives similar
treatment as that sick young girl, but this time it's decidedly horrific.
Her fate is a mirror image of the farm girl's, with Baptism, Sacrifice and
Resurrection all coming into play.

Dumont's protagonist is an enigma, sometimes Christlike, other times demonic.
This dichotomy is reflected in the actor's startlingly commanding face,
handsome on the upper half, something other on the bottom (Dewaele resembles
a handsomer Jackie Earle Haley). He looks like a wood cut of a Spanish
priest. On the flip side, we meet the farm girl with short, spiky
hair, but over the course of the film, her hair is often flattened to look
like Joan of Arc. The film has little dialogue and features only natural
sound. Images are carefully composed (in one notable shot, the girl
and her friend stand, heads titled towards each other, eyes closed and they
look like they could be brother and sister, yet the actors bear no resemblance).

"Hors Satan" could be grouped with Carlos Reygadas' "Silent Light" (itself
based on Dreyer's "Ordet") and the films of Robert Bresson, but his minimalism
makes his meaning more elusive, inviting less emotion than those filmmakers.
This is a work that engages throughout, at least for those who can take
a determined pace, but it may elude a spiritual connection with the viewer.